WAX is Back!
By Joseph Gallivan
One of Portland’s best Christmas traditions is burning bright right now. "White Album Xmas" is the note-for-note live rendering of The Beatles’ “White Album,” coupled with a live performance from Rose City Circus. WAX is at the Alberta Rose Theatre through Dec. 13.
As usual, John Averill leads his NowHere 16-piece band in performing the 30-track double album. The Beatles themselves never played it live on stage because they broke up shortly after its 1968 release.
“We go for accuracy with feeling,” Averill told KBOO of their modus operandi, aiming to hit every note while maintaining emotional depth. “So it’s not just a bunch of musical stiffs reading off charts, people can get an experience you can feel as well as listen to.”
The band discovers new harmonies and refines details each year. A few years back, Averill found he had been singing one line in the verse to “Back in the U.S.S.R.” wrong, by one note, on the word “bed.” Each year, he re-listens to the album with headphones, to check the nuances. Although the members rehearse alone, he makes sure to point out where anyone is straying from the George Martin-produced album.
Averill is also the leader of MarchFourth, and is used to corralling a football team-sized band. Unlike the wandering mayhem of that jazz band, the
NowHere band are usually squeezed stage left. However, this year they are more integrated into the action.
For instance, at one point, jugglers from Circus Luminescence toss LED-lit clubs around a guitarist as he enters, and Averill has a schtick with hat juggler Dave Clay.
Jon Dutch is the strongman/acrobat/ringmaster who writes the new narrative each year. It doesn’t track the music, but it’s always a tasty accompaniment to the comfort food of the Beatles. This year, the script is loosely based on Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”, complete with Tiny Tim (an actor on his knees with a can of helium) and Scrooge, played by clown Emily Frank Newton.
Dutch and his pole act partner Anngela Burt have expanded from Rose City Circus to perform at halftime at National Basketball Association games. He and Anngela missed WAX last year because they did a three-month stint at a circus in Germany.
“We are trying to make our act the highest level of the world-class stage, and we are debuting a trick this year,” Dutch told KBOO.
Usually he balances a pole on his head upon which Anngela performs daring aerial moves. This time, instead of doing a handstand, she balances, hands-free, on her head on top of the pole, while he juggles.
“It's basically our heads connected by a 12-foot pole,” he says, saying they have to use a shorter pole than in the NBA, because of the Alberta Street Theater’s cozy dimensions.
Also new is Achillea Grim, a powerful aerialist from California, and Blake Hicks who made his name as a flatland BMXer playing big shows in Las Vegas.
“He rides around in a circle like a ballerina and balances on his bicycle,” says Dutch.
Certainly, some of the old favorites are there, such as Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein, the cowboy clown and trick roper. LLL stands stage front with a giant lasso which he twirls over the audience’s heads. Averill also has two new surprises for the encore songs.
Their love of the music will never die. Dutch recently rescued, then forgot about, his old cassette tape collection from his parents’ house.
“It was in the back of my car for four years, and Blake found my 36-year-old “White Album” cassette that my parents gave me when I was five years old and listened to all the time. Me and Blake rocked it out in the car and I've been listening to it ever since,” says Dutch.